A Blogging Experiment by Zvi S. Rosen – All views are my own. Those who do not remember IP history are doomed to relitigate it.

9th Circuit Historical Records and Briefs: the United States v. Groucho and Chico Marx

Essentially every case filed on appeal has a printed transcript and briefs created as part of the appellate rules of most courts. These transcripts are a trove of information about the case, because they contain everything recorded from the trial court, typeset and organized. The briefs, of course, are the written arguments to the appellate court. The Records and Briefs of the US Supreme Court (available as a database from Gale or on microfilm) are the best-known set of records, but every US Circuit Court of Appeals and state supreme and intermediate appellate court have such records.

Tonight, I discovered that a substantial cache of briefs from the 9th Circuit of Appeals, which had been collected by the Library at UC Irvine School of Law, are available online through the Internet Archive. It’s unclear if the UC Irvine Library prepared an index to the volumes, but it doesn’t seem to be online anywhere. There is a tool called the 9th Circuit Historical Records Index System (or 9chris), using the uncorrected OCR from the Internet Archive, but it’s a little wonky (although it works decently once you get used to it).

One case I did find was The United States v. Groucho & Chico Marx, filed 1937 with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where they were appealing their conviction for criminal copyright infringement. The LA Times has a bit of information about the case, which concerned the use of a script the brothers had been sent but rejected. The brothers were fined $1,000 but spared prison time. In 1938 the 9th Circuit affirmed their conviction.

The case file contains a transcription of the original “Mr. Dibble and Mr. Dabble” sketch, transcripts of testimony from Groucho and Chico Marx , transcripts of radio programs in full, and of course the briefs of all parties.

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Author: Zvi S. Rosen

Lawyer and sometimes academic. I've written a fair deal about the evolution of intellectual property law into its present form, this blog is a way to share things that don't fit into a full-length article.
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